The first flight of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT) to begin a three-and-a-half hour mission to deliver two dozen satellites into three distinct orbits. The Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters returned to Cape Canaveral for successful landings, but the center core stage crashed during a landing attempt on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

The mission was the second Falcon 9 launch of the day for SpaceX. Liftoff occurred at 1:21 a.m. PDT (4:21 a.m. EDT, 0821 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

SpaceX aims to launch a Falcon 9 rocket Monday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with 10 new satellites for Iridium’s tracking and message relay constellation in low Earth orbit.